This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

A Text Message from My Sister, Secret Codename: Cordelia
I've decided we should make gingerbread people with the girls while ur here. We'll put down a tarp.

An Email from My Sister, Secret Codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer
For Christmas I am making Mom and Dad a present that involves seashells. Yesterday I went for a very long walk along the beaches of Swampscott that felt more like a safari than a walk, because my shoes were full of water and my nose was freezing off (clearly I've never been on a safari). I found a myriad of fantastic shells, and chief among my favorites were a bunch of empty mussel shells that had other smaller shells of various colors anchored to them, so that they looked liked fantastical hybrids. I brought them home, washed and dried them, and left them on my bathroom counter overnight. Today I spread twenty-five shells all around my work surface and started working with rubber cement. At a certain point, something moved in my peripheral vision and…

I just wanted to let you all know that my blog break is going excellently.  (How would you know unless I blogged it?)

My publisher in Taiwan (Gaea) is releasing Graceling again with a new jacket that a lot of you will find familiar. Click to enbiggen -------->

I've been reading some good blog posts lately and wanted to share a few:
Tamora Pierce posting about a female blogger "who writes about and wears clothes that don't make her look like Snooki, Beyoncé, or Miley Cyrus. Leandra Medine wears clothes that aren't meant to draw the male eye." Read more here.Tamora Pierce (again!) posting about self defense from pervos in crowded spaces. "You know something? You have every right to stand or walk along, thinking your thinks, listening your music, without some s**tpoke waving his willie at you. If he's gonna ruin your day, don't you think you should do your best to ruin his?"  Read more here.Tamora Pierce (again again! She is unstoppable!  In addi…

...with an important song about friends.  Thanks to my friends, codename: B-P and the PBs. :o)



Also, best of luck to my favorite a cappella group on the show The Sing Off: Street Corner Symphony. Here they are singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." (Kids? Don't even THINK about trying that at home!)

Okay, away I go until January.  I swear.

Oh, December. At least you're predictable.

Last year, I took most of December off from the blog. This year, I might as well turn it into a tradition. I don't know about you, but for me, December is always twice as much month as any other month, and I have a whole lot to do before I'm ready to get on an airplane and venture to a yet-to-be-determined location for Christmas. For example, I need to determine a location. :o)   Anyway, between trapezing and Bollywood, my last few posts were so long that some of you might need all of December to read them.

One note to anyone thinking about buying signed copies of Graceling or Fire as Christmas presents: I'm pretty sure I'm going to be 1,158 miles away from my local bookseller during the week before Christmas... *measures arm* ...way too far away for me to reach the title page with my pen, so get those orders in soon.

To those who have celebrated, are celebrating, or will be celebrating a holiday: peace and joy to you. For…

And now I would like to offer a few more movie recommendations for the uninitiated, from the only-recently initiated.  I've never been one for plot summary. Instead, I'll tell you a snippet about what struck me, while also trying to convey a little something about why Bollywood has captured my heart.  (BTW -- if you're only going to watch one -- skip to the end of the list.)

In no particular order:

Dil To Pagal Hai ("The Heart Is Crazy").  This movie contained a lot of silly stuff about fate, a very silly ending, and some spectacularly silly scenes of people frolicking in fields, including a few places where Madhuri Dixit throws herself to the ground with romantic abandon, except that every time, it looks like she just tripped, so you're worried, until you realize that she is prostrate due to being enraptured rather than injured. Despite all that silliness, three things in this movie charmed me completely.  (1) It's a movie about a dance troupe; conse…

This week, I feel bloggy! So here's an extra post.

Thank you, Will Ludwigsen, for your beautiful post, Aid and Comfort. Readers, check it out -- this is a great little post with some spot-on thoughts about the kind of love and support a writer needs. It's also one of the nicest acknowledgement posts I've ever read.

Not unrelatedly: thank you, Publishers Weekly, for including this teeny picture of my mother, father, and sister (secret codename: Cordelia) in your article about ALAN. It meant so much to me that they were at the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award reception, and I'm so happy to see them recognized.  I only wish secret codename: Apocalyptica could have been there, too.  I would not be able to do what I do without my family.  (In other news -- that big check in the picture?  It didn't fit in my suitcase, and carrying it through the airport was kind of hilarious.)

Next up: do you know the podcast Coverville?  I've recently started listening. The most …

Warning to the acrophobic (and to my mother): This post contains trapezey photos!

So, I really do think that trapezing is the perfect extracurricular activity for the writer -- for two reasons. One: trapezing is completely different from writing, and therefore, it's the perfect break. When I'm writing, I'm sitting in a chair, I'm racking my brains, I'm ALL in my head, thinking, thinking, thinking. I've got a great connection between my brain and my left hand, but beyond that, I'm kind of physically oblivious. I'm so out of touch with my body sometimes that I get mad when I realize I'm hungry (what, I have to feed myself AGAIN?). Or, I find myself in another room, and can't remember how I got there or why. Nothing could be more different from this than jumping off a platform, swinging through the air, leaping off the trapeze and being caught. As I've mentioned before, when I'm at a trapeze class, I don't think about writing, not once.…

Some Tips for the Days Leading up to the Speech
PREPARE, PREPARE, and PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Nothing is more important than this and nothing will make more of a difference. I try to have my speech written at least a few days before I'm giving the speech, and if possible, a week or two.  This gives me lots of time to practice speaking it aloud. With each practice run, I revise the speech a little. And with each practice run, the speech becomes part of my speaking memory and my muscle memory.  I know from experience that if you have practiced often, calmly in your kitchen, the way you want to say a speech, then on the day of the speech, you can shake and jitter your way through that entire speech and still have it come out sounding the way you practiced it, so much so that people will come up to you afterward and tell you that they wished they could be so calm and composed while giving a speech.  (You should probably try not to burst into hysterical laughter when someone says this to y…

I wanted to share my acceptance remarks from the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award reception on Monday, but decided to backdate them so they're linkable but won't monopolize your blog readers. My remarks are here. It's basically a short speech about some of the place Fire came from. Also, Blogger, I am not impressed with your jump breaks. Readers, if you thought you saw a rawther long post from me on Tuesday and then it disappeared, I'm sorry about that, it was an experiment gone wrong. Curses!  But.  Hope y'all like the speech.

Also, I wish everyone celebrating Thanksgiving today a peaceful and stress-free time.  One thing I do: every year, I try to buy nothing on Friday.  Turns out that the Friday after Thanksgiving is a really lovely day not to go into any stores.  Try it!  It might be for you.  Actively choosing not to shop on Black Friday makes me feel centered.  Unless I've forgotten to do my grocery shopping beforehand, in which case, it makes me feel hung…

This morning I board a plane for Orlando, and late this afternoon, I'll be at NCTE-ALAN, receiving the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award for Fire. My parents will be there, and also secret codename: Cordelia! How nice that this event is taking place near a branch of my family!

The other day, in my post about my editor, I mentioned that good editing is invisible, like the world's best stage directions. Giving credit where credit is due: that was my friend Becca's analogy, not mine. And one of the reasons I liked it so much when she said it is that I've recently been encountering what just might be the world's best -- or, at least, the world's most entertaining -- stage directions. Where? In the plays of J.M. Barrie.

Imagine, as a set designer, being given this:
"There is a piece of carpet that has been beaten into nothingness, but is still a carpet, there is a hearth-rug of brilliant rags that is probably gratified when your toes catch in it and you are hurled…